


Rumors About Angels

by BrigidsBlest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, angels angels angels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:14:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrigidsBlest/pseuds/BrigidsBlest
Summary: Dean meets his guardian angel. No, it's not Cas.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before season 12 finale and the birth of Jack.

It began with the bloodybones.

By which I mean to say, it really began with Dean’s birth.

 

* * *

 

 

The brothers’ attention had been drawn by a series of mysterious murders in Dubuque, a medium-sized Iowa city. Three children under the age of ten, torn limb from limb, the internal organs and soft flesh devoured, skulls cracked open to get at the eyes, tongue, and brains. Gnaw marks on the bones that hadn’t been cracked open to get at the marrow. The shaken police had chased down and killed as many feral dogs and local coyotes as they could find and proclaimed the case closed.

That had been enough until the next day, when a pair of six-year-old twins had also been found mostly consumed. The Impala found itself parked in the lot of a seedy motel on the outskirts of town before noon that day, and as Sam and Dean hunched over lunch at the local diner – bacon-cheeseburgers big enough to choke a horse and the best cherry pie in the state – Sam went over what he had found online so far.

“The most recent victims were found at a local park a little after three in the afternoon yesterday. They’d only been missing about an hour, so the murders happened during daylight,” he began.

“Rules out vampires,” Dean said through a mouthful of bacon, beef, and cheese. “What else?”

“Well, there are a lot of state parks in the area, and the oldest part of the city was built on the bluffs over the Mississippi River. There are also a lot of caves and old mines in the area,” Sam replied. “My guess is something subterranean. Trolls, maybe some kind of faery creature? The majority of the original settlers were Irish and German, according to old census records.”

“Could be werewolves,” Dean pointed out.

“Could be,” Sam agreed, “but why only go after children? And none of them into puberty yet?”

“So…morgue first, then talk to the parents?” Dean suggested.

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam said.

 

* * *

 

 

An examination of the bodies of the children at the morgue had ruled out werewolves; the marks made by the teeth showed that whatever had eaten the children had flat, grinding teeth – almost human, but far bigger – and not the canine fangs of wolves.

The two had split up to speak to the four sets of parents, and after his first interview with the mother of the second child to die, Sam had noticed an interesting tidbit: despite the fact that she lived in a city with more churches than bars, a city that the census listed as almost 95% Catholic, her son hadn’t been baptized. Cross-checking with the other parents found all five slain children shared the same trait.

When Dean and Sam got back together for dinner, they compared notes. No baptism. No First Communion. And no church attendance at all.

“Witches looking for the fat of unbaptized kids to make flying ointment?” Dean asked, oblivious to the glare from the couple at the booth behind theirs.

“Why would witches eat the bodies?” Sam pointed out. He’d pulled out their father’s journal, flipping through the pages. “You remember that rawhead we ran into a couple months before we found Dad?"

Dean gave his younger brother a stony look. “You mean the one I tried to fry that ended up making me reaper bait? Not likely to forget something that almost killed me, Sammy,” he grunted, then shook his head. “Man, that covers a lot of monsters. I have a better memory than I thought.”

“British lore links the Rawhead with another kind of faery boogeyman called a Bloodybones. This one likes caves, forests, wild places near water.” Sam glanced over his shoulder at the muddy flow of the Mississippi River, visible through the main window of the dockside seafood restaurant. “Their preferred prey is unbaptized kids that haven’t hit puberty yet.”

“Dad’s journal say how to kill ‘em?” Dean asked.

“Holy water and blessed silver daggers,” Sam answered.

“Piece of cake,” Dean tossed back. “Now we just have to find it.”

“Good probability it’s hunting near non-parochial schools close to forests and parks,” Sam offered up. “I can look at the maps and probably narrow it down to two or three schools pretty quick.”

“Good. Let’s get this thing before any other kids bite it,” Dean muttered.

What thing?" Castiel asked out of nowhere. "And why did the children bite the thing?"

The two brothers blinked, looking up. Cas looked tired, as he almost always did these days.

"Grab a chair," Dean told the angel, who obligingly pulled one out from the table and sat down. The brothers filled him in, taking turns to tell him about the child murders and their theory about what was behind it.

"This is abhorrent," Cas said flatly when they had finished. "You cannot go after this creature like this."

Both Sam and Dean blinked. "Why not?" Sam finally asked cautiously.

"Most faery creatures are able to make themselves invisible to mortal eyes," Castiel told them. "It is a defense mechanism they developed when worked iron weapons became common."

"Oh," Dean said, frowning. "Will they show up on infrared goggles?"

"I do not know," the angel replied. "But...there is an alternative. Have either of you ever heard the story of the mortal woman kidnapped by a faery lord to be midwife to his wife, who was with child?"

Dean looked blank, but Sam's face lit up with animation. "Yeah, I remember that one!" he said. "The faery gave the mortal woman a jar of magic ointment he made and told her to smear it on the child's eyes, but not to touch it herself. Just after she had anointed the kid, her left eye itched and she reached up to scratch it without thinking, getting some of the ointment on it."

"Yes, and then she could see the true shapes of the lord, his wife, and the babe," Castiel said. "And when she addressed him two weeks later in the town square, and he realized she could see him, he asked her which eye she could see him with...and then gouged it out."

Dean made a face. "So...you know how to make this goop?" he asked.

"I know someone who has the recipe," Castiel said. "I will go to fetch it, then meet you at your motel. I'm sure there's somewhere near here you can buy the ingredients to make it."

"You hope!" Dean muttered, but he nodded and the angel rose from his seat and was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

Once Castiel had returned with the recipe, Sam found a local shop that sold most of the ingredients they needed, and the remaining two were already among their supplies. Castiel leaned past Sam to peer down at the mixing bowl full of dirty brown ooze as Sam added the last ingredient -- ashes of a lightning-struck oak branch -- into the mix and stirred it with a spoon. The mixture smelled appalling, and after Castiel had retreated, Dean came over to stare at the muddy-looking ointment.

"So help me, if this stuff makes me go blind--" he began, but Sam shook his head.

"We're going to kill this thing, Dean. It's not going to matter if it finds out we can see him. We won't give him the chance to claw our eyes out."

"I am SO reassured," Dean muttered.

"I advise that you not apply the ointment until after you have arrived at where you plan to hunt the creature," Castiel said impassively. "I cannot guarantee you might not be distracted while driving if you see things you are not expecting to on the way there."

"Swell," Dean growled, throwing the angel a surly look. "Let's go, Sammy."

None of them noticed the stray hair that had fallen from Castiel's head and gotten mixed into the ointment.

 

* * *

 

Their mistake -- one they'd made occasionally in the past -- was in assuming that all the lore they needed was contained in their father's journal.

It wasn't.

Just as their father's journal had mentioned nothing of the creature's ability to turn itself invisible, or the ointment that would allow them to see it, it said nothing of the fact that Bloodybones hunt in pairs, male and female, feeding themselves to gorging prior to mating season itself.

They exchanged exasperated and slightly frantic glances as the two gigantic humanoids they had just rousted from the park right after sunset -- naked, hairy, skin red as fresh clots -- tore off in different directions.  "There's two of them, Dean!" Sam shouted.

"Tell me something I don't know!" Dean snapped, more than a little on edge, the Mark of Cain singing in his blood. "Go after that one!" He gestured at the swiftly-retreating smaller fae, then tore off after the larger one without another word.

The creature led him on a merry chase through the woods, vanishing at last into a grubby, uneven hole in the hillside. Dean came to a panting stop just in front of it, raising his flashlight to peer through the ragged cave entrance. The tunnel inside turned so sharply, just short of the entryway, that the beam from his light could only penetrate the darkness a few inches.

He swore, shaking his head grimly, and carefully climbed over the six-inch sill of the entrance and followed.

And that is where I come in, for just as Dean followed the bloodybones, I followed Dean.

As I had been doing since the moment he was born.


	2. Chapter 2

            Dean stepped inside cautiously and immediately paused by the cave's entrance. He could hear the intermittent drip of water, smell the dank scent of decaying leaves, soggy moss, and the green odor of slick algae that grew in places on the floor where the water had pooled. He craned his head to one side, listening intently; the moment he had entered the cave, a veil of silence had come down around him, shutting out sounds from outside the cavern.

            Deeper into the cave, there was the sound of something hard scraping across the stone floor. He hefted the flashlight cautiously, shining it around, and took a deep breath as he saw the narrow, twisting tunnel that led down and deeper into the ground. The fingers of his other hand tightened around the silver dagger he carried, and with a shake of his head, he stalked cautiously forward.

            _Dunno what all was in that goop,_ he thought, a shiver running through him, _but feels like all my senses are on fire._ He could feel every minute air current, stirring the fine hairs on the backs of his hands and arms and neck; every micro-change in temperature as air cooled around him; every whisper in the tunnel that dogged his steps, his own footfalls half-echoed by softer, feathery ones that followed in his wake. He swiveled, peering behind him, but saw nothing amid the shadows.

            With every step he took downward, round a final bend, the tunnel began to broaden, opening up and out until he stood at the entrance to a much larger cavern. The drip-drip of water had sped up to a slow trickle, rivulets from the soil over the cavern's arching roof bleeding through the pores in the stone to slide down the walls in limestone-thick tears. Here and there, patches of pale green phosphorescent lichen clung to the damp walls, shedding their poisonous, sickly radiance in a weak glow. Dean swung the beam of the flashlight around the edges of the room; there were deeper pockets here and there where the light would not fully penetrate -- smaller holes in the stone that led to side tunnels, or nooks where anything could be hiding. The beam did not quaver as it traveled back and forth, revealing dips and rises in the uneven stone floor -- even several areas where the ugly, smooth grey limestone dropped away, revealing possibly-bottomless pits in size from that of a softball to one crevasse large enough to swallow a man whole.

            Something brushed past him on his right, a shimmer in the air, small and slight and soft; he narrowed his eyes, straining to see--

            And then there was a roar from his left side and something slammed into him with the force of a galloping mare, knocking him off his feet and sending him flying. Pain tore into his side as he went sailing, the flashlight and dagger both knocked from his grip, the beam of the light pinwheeling in crazy circles to throw shards of random illumination before dropping the room into darkness.

            He heard the dagger go clattering metallically against the stone floor and then there was a single _tink!_ as it hit the lip of the largest of the sinkholes, quavered on the edge, and then tipped over. He did not hear it hit bottom.

            Dean hit the far wall hard enough to knock his head, draw blood, and drop to the ground...and then the scarlet-skinned bloodybones was atop him.

            It was heavy, and hot, and _strong_ ; he caught its hammering fists in his own, trying to stop the claws. One ripped free and tore forward, leaving a bleeding gash down the side of his face, the gore that coated the skin of the thing atop him like a second skin seeping into his own, making it burn. He could feel the Mark of Cain on his arm thrash, snarl, writhe under his skin like it was trying to get free. The bloodybones wrestled, trying to tear its other arm free of his grip, and only the strength and rage the Mark provided had kept it from doing so already.

            "Cas!" he yelled hoarsely, hearing his voice echo back and forth through the cavern under the louder waterfall of the fae-thing's roars. The dagger was gone, gone, and without some way of retrieving it from the who-knows-how-deep pit it had fallen into, he was dead. Maybe this time for good.

            The bloodybones hurled his arm away, up over his head; his knuckles scraped against the wet stone floor as it pulled its own wrist free. Crimson madness shone in its eyes and it bared jagged fangs.

            Barely audible under the thing's snarl was a tiny, metallic scraping sound.

            And then as it reared back to tear him apart, warm flesh touched his own and cool, wet metal was pressed into his hand. He instantly recognized the dagger's grip by the feel of it and speared forward with the knife, plunging it into the bloodybones' chest. The cavern was suddenly full of blazing, fiery light -- coming not from the fae creature but from behind him -- and the thing shrieked as it began to decay, centuries of blood and tissue coming apart like a Kleenex under a particularly snotty sneeze.

            "Cas?" he gasped as he threw himself forward, out from under the chunky, rotting waterfall, twisting as he rolled to throw his friend a grateful look--

The form that knelt on the lip of the pit was not, remotely, Castiel. Great sweeps of burning light arched up over its shoulders like wings, giving off neither soot nor smoke as they reached upward, almost tall enough to brush the cavern's ceiling. The light from the fire was nearly bright enough to be blinding, and he narrowed his eyelids against the glare. The form -- clearly female -- floated several inches above the floor.  The girl's entire body was engulfed in fire, gold and amber and scarlet flames flickering and racing across her flesh.  Any hair had been consumed, all features — save for green eyes that blazed like emerald suns — melted away into a blank mask like the smooth, unmarred face of a department-store mannequin.

            "What the Hell?" Dean barked hoarsely, gaping at the hovering form.

            There was a sound, hollow and rushing, like the noise made when all the air was sucked out of a room, and then all the tiny fires that had started throughout the cavern where celestial fire had touched, dried out, and ignited once-wet patches of lichen and algae were abruptly absorbed into the form's thin frame and --

            Slowly, she floated back down until bare feet touched the smooth limestone floor. Raven hair in a thick braid fell like a hangman's rope over the slight curve of one shoulder to hang down to her knees. Flawless skin as pale as alabaster shone with an almost luminous perfection; high cheekbones and a narrow, foxlike chin framed full rosebud lips the color of dawn...and those deep, emerald eyes.

            She wore a white, long-sleeved peasant blouse tucked in at the waistband of a violet cotton drawstring skirt, and aside from a slender strand of silver bells around one ankle that chimed softly as she took a step forward, she wore no other ornamentation. The smile on her lips was gentle and innocent and full of...love?

            Dean gawked.

            "Hello, Dean," she murmured softly. "You can call me Solange. I'm your guardian angel."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in Season 10.

            "What?"

            It was impossible not to love the stunned, confused look on his face. Impossible not to love the fact that he'd already regained his feet, and stood there defensively with a knife that could kill most anything that came for him. Impossible not to love almost everything about him, of course, but that's how our Father made me.

            Okay, so I didn't love the Mark of Cain, but he'd had it for awhile, and I'd gotten used to it; there wasn't much choice about that, after all. Now he was standing there, able to see me for the first time -- thanks to the ointment, with Cas' hair added into the mix, unfortunately -- and trying desperately to make sense of things.

            I needed to help him with that. It was my job, and it was my entire life.

            "Your guardian angel," I repeated. There should have been mud and slime on my clothes after I'd dove down into the pit to fetch his dagger, but I'd erased them. It had been easy to fly back up from the spot where the dagger had come to land, seventy feet down, and once I'd reached the surface, to push the dagger back into his hand.

            I couldn't have killed the beast for him, but I was allowed to help him in other ways.

            Or...could I have? When our Father had set the rules -- more like guidelines, really -- that had shaped existence for the guardians, none of them had taken into the account that one day, one of our charges might be able to see us. It shouldn't have been able to happen...but then, it hadn't ever occurred to me or any of the others that a magic salve meant to allow a mortal to see hidden non-human creatures might become tainted with part of the essence from an angel. Easy enough, in hindsight, to figure out how it had happened. Harder to figure out how to deal with the circumstances.

            I could only hope that Father -- wherever He was -- would understand. His only command was that we look after the souls of our charges, and aid them, and love them.

            "My guardian angel," he said slowly, frowning. "I have a guardian angel?"

            "Everyone has a guardian angel, Dean," I told him. "It's just that usually you can't see us."

            "Sam has one?" he asked. I nodded. The scowl deepened. "Everyone."

            I nodded.

            "Does Cas know about this?" he growled.

            "Castiel and the other angels you've dealt with are aware that we exist," I told him easily. There was no tug of warning resonating through my essence, nothing to suggest I was saying something I shouldn't. "But they have nothing to do with us."

            "Why not?"

            "Because that's what our Father decreed," I answered. "You saw what happened when He left. Heaven dissolved into...politics. Then war." I made a face, could feel my nose crinkling in distaste. "Each of us guardians exist to watch over one person, and one person alone. We are spun from His love and His will. Nothing but our charge can matter to us. Normally, the other angels -- even the seraphim, the cherubim, the archangels -- can't even see us unless we will it."

            "That's a hell of a heavy load to drop on someone all at once, lady," he snarled, his eyes wary. I didn't, couldn't, take it personally. He was just being Dean.

            "I'm sorry to have upset you," I said quietly. "I didn't mean to. Normally, our duty extends to our charges' souls. But when you became able to see me, feel me--"

            "That was you, brushing past me when I got down here?" he asked.

            "Yes. And when you could sense me, something inside me...shifted. The rules that normally prohibit me from interfering in the material word...just disappeared."

            He took a cautious look at me, then sheathed the knife and stuck it in the breast pocket inside his jacket. "You retrieved my knife," he stated flatly. I nodded again, and he stepped forward, halving the distance between us, squinting. The darkness had rushed in thick and swift between us again once I had dimmed my light. I reached out with my hand and my will, and his flashlight was in my hand -- lens shattered, but that was easy enough to fix. I held the light out to him and he flicked it on.

            "So..." he stumbled over his words as he aimed the light at me, letting it sweep over my face. "Damn, you're not much older than a kid."

            I laughed. "I'm older than the planet, Dean," I told him calmly. "I just _look_ 19."

            He shook his head, and I could see him trying to wrap his brain around it all. "And you've been...what, following me? -- since I was born?"

            "That makes it sound so...stalker-ish. I'm bound to you by God's will, from the moment you were conceived to the moment you finally pass on for good. Longer, really...when you've gone on to your final reward...or punishment...I'll be there with you still." I tried not to wince at the words. He'd died before...gone to Hell and Purgatory before. It just hadn't stuck. Watching him suffer...had been very hard.

            "Solange...is that your real name?" he asked.

            I shook my head. "Unlike the other angels, guardians aren't permitted to divulge their angelic names. I'm not sure why; so far as I know, it doesn't leave us vulnerable. But that's one of the Father's rules." I paused. "We pick our own names. Mine is French; it means 'angel of the sun'." His eyes flickered in understanding, remembering my celestial form. "I was born of holy fire and His love to serve and guard you."

            He took another step closer, still cautious, then grimaced, one hand going to his side. The knuckles of the hand that the bloodybones had ripped free from were bloody, the skin shredded. I let the spectrum of my vision shift, his flesh fading away to the woven patterns of gold and silver and diamond energies that made up his life-force. They were rusty and tarnished at the left side of his torso, the ribs there broken where he had hit the cave wall when the thing had first charged and tossed him, internal bleeding pooling around his liver, the still-bleeding gash on his face.

            He might well die, and now that his physical health was as much my concern as his spiritual health, I couldn't permit that.

            "Let me help you," I said softly, closing the distance between us, and reached out to take his good hand.

            I poured warmth into him, energy, a tiny piece of myself spun off from the whole to catch up those broken lines of energy inside him. God's own weavers, we were, and I did my job, draining away the bleeding, knitting his skin back together, soothing away the lacerations in his liver, healing the broken bones in smooth and unblemished lines. Giving of myself to him, healing him, was pure ecstasy, second only to being in the Father's presence alone, and I smiled again at the sudden rush of relief and surprise in his eyes.

            "Better?" I asked him, letting his hand go.

            "You said it," he muttered, sinking down to his heels. I knelt at his side, one hand alighting as lightly as a breath on his shoulder. "Even Cas isn't that good," he confessed.

            "Castiel isn't your guardian," I told him. "I know you like no one else, Dean. I've been with you for your entire life. I exist only for you."

            He looked up at me. "Just how is it I can see you now, then, huh?"

            "The goop," I chuckled. "The ointment you made and applied to your eyes to see the bloodybones."

            "Yeah?" he challenged. "Last I checked, lady, angels weren't fairy creatures."

            "No, you're right about that," I agreed. "You remember when your brother was making it? Right at the end, when Castiel leaned over to look at it?" He nodded. "People lose stray hairs all the time. So do angels, apparently. One of Castiel's hairs fell into the brew. As near as I can tell, that part of his essence mingled with the ointment and...voila."

            He reached up and smeared at the ointment around his eyes with a hand, grimacing, and sighed. "So does this mean Sam will be able to see you, too?"

            "Probably not...at least, not unless I will it," I said. "But he might be able to see his own guardian."

            "Can you see his guardian angel?" he asked me.

            "Oh, of course," I answered. "We guardians can see each other. Sometimes it's necessary, although the logistics of those rare times are always...odd."

            "Odd? What do you mean?"

            "Well..." I said. "As an outside example, think of conjoined twins. Together forever. Always in touch with each other. It stands to reason their guardians would have to work closely together as well." He made a face and I smiled. "That's a longshot example, of course, but you see what I mean."

            "Yeah, I guess," he growled. "So...you've been with me forever, watching? When I eat? When I shower? When I--" he broke off, flushing, and I felt heat rise in my own cheeks as I imagined what he was thinking: times he'd been with women, times he'd used the restroom. The times he'd been blind drunk, or working to torture other damned souls in Hell, or just a few months ago, as a demon.

            "Always," I said softly. "But it's not the perverted, snooping thing you think. I've always done my best to give you your privacy when you needed it. I guard without having to watch you like a...how might you put it...a porn movie."

            "Dean!" Sam's voice came echoing down the tunnel and his head snapped around toward it like a retriever dog going on point.

            "And that's my cue to give you that privacy," I murmured quietly. He twisted back toward me, frowning. "I can overcome the effects of the ointment if necessary...and you have a lot to think about. This isn't goodbye, Dean, because I'm not going anywhere. I'll never leave you. But it's probably a good idea to give you some time to let this all sink in."

            And I made myself fade from his sight just as Sam and Castiel came crashing into the cavern.


End file.
